So I guess it's about time I jumped into the blogging world and wrote my first post. Seeing as it's in the running for being my favourite movie, and I rewatched it today, I'm going to talk about "American Beauty".
American Beauty is the story of 42 year old Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) and his family. Lester is sick of his job, his family, his home and the lack of respect that he gets from everyone. The "high point" of his day is masturbating in the shower in the morning. However, when he first see's his daughter Jane's best friend Angela (Mina Suvari) he becomes immediately fixated on her. He begins to have sexual fantasies and leers at her any chance he gets. His wife Carolyn (Annette Benning) is in roughly the same boat as Lester, although she delves into the world of materialistic need. Everything must be perfect for her, weather it be the music played at dinner or the garden tongs which have to match her gardening clogs. She begins to brake out of her shell after meeting Buddy Kane, a fellow real esaate agent at a real estate agent's party of some sort in which he invites her to "pick his brain". Their daughter Jane (Thora Birch) is a typical teenager, angry, insecure and confused, all of which begin to dissipate when she meets Ricky Fits (Wes Bently) the mysterious new next door neigbour who seems to have a disturbing fascination of video taping everything he sees, citing that there's beauty in everything. Ricky's father Col. Frank Fits USMC (Chris Cooper) is a homophobic, ex-military, conservative man who keeps his "mentaly unstable" son in check.
The first thing to mention about "American Beauty" has to be the acting. Kevin Spacey plays Lester Burnham with such excellence and believability that is truely disturbing. The scene with the asparagus is played most wonderfully by Spacey and Benning, contrasting the different personalities between the two characters, Lester's calm and collected coversation-esque tone too his sudden outbursts and Carolyn's crazed rambilings. Spacey brilliantly shows Lester slowly becomming more and more comfortable being himself and doing and saying what he wants to do rather then conforming to other people's wishes.
Another factor that deserves to be showered in praise is the story and dialouge. The dialouge, weather it be Lester's voice overs or the joint conversations of the characters, is used fantasticly to reflect the personalities of the characters. Jane's insecurities and frustrations are shown with lines such as "Their such assholes" in refrence to her parents and "It's wierd watching myself. I don't like how I look". The story itself has caused debate between many academics on the main principles of it, weather it be "the meaning of life", "gender identification" and "the hollow existance of the American suburbs" not even the creators of the film can pin point which one exactly it is. I personally see it as a story of breaking out of ana oppressive routine and coming to terms with ones-self by breaking the boundarys of what is expected of you and what you have become comfortable in.
I'm finding it difficult to find anything that I drasticly disliked in the film. However after researching it it turns out the director Sam Mendes cut the film into a more optimisitc telling rather then a cynical one. I feel that instead of concentrating on the whole "there is so much beauty in the world" theme that they should have made that an underlying theme and made the whole thing slightly more depressive, of course some people would disagree with me but this is just the type of themes I like.
In summary American Beauty is a film well deserving of it's 8.6 rating on IMDB and it's 8 OSCAR nominations and 5 wins including Best picture, Best actor in a leading role (Spacey), Best cinematography, Best director (Sam Mendes) and Best original screenplay. Which, lets be honest, are the ones you want to win. Overall American Beauty is a thing of Beauty.
